An officer in the Australian army who was stripped of his security clearance because Asio believes he is more loyal to Israel is still in the Australian defence force – but in the inactive reserve, “pending administrative action”, parliament has heard.
On Monday, Guardian Australia revealed the man had been stripped of his security clearance after the administrative review tribunal upheld Asio’s assessment that he was not of “appropriate character and trustworthiness to hold any security clearance”.
The chief of army, Lt Gen Simon Stuart, confirmed in response to questions in Senate estimates about the case from the Greens senator David Shoebridge that the man was still in the army.
“The member is in the inactive reserve, pending administrative action,” Stuart said on Wednesday.
“The member’s status in terms of their service [is] they’ve been moved from one service category to another. The service category is best described as inactive, so that’s the action that has been taken thus far in relation to the advice that we’ve been provided.”
The man, anonymised in the ruling as HWMW, had told Asio interviewers he did not view Israel as a foreign government and that he would share classified information with the Israel Defense Forces if they asked.
Asio said the officer, who is Jewish and served 19 years in the Australian military, withheld information from Australian officials about training courses he undertook in Israel – where he is not a citizen – in 2016 and 2019 which included self-defence, security and firearms training.
The training was for a Sydney community security group (CSG) – an organisation that provides security and intelligence services to the Jewish community – in which he volunteered between 2014 and 2023.
The officer had said in cross-examination that withholding the information was not a lie but not a “complete disclosure”, and later said it was to save himself from interrogation and questioning.
Shoebridge on Wednesday asked whether the ADF had undertaken a review for any other members that may have done similar training with any CSG, but officials said the question would be taken on notice, amid concerns about national security and what information could be shared.
HWMW had told interviewers the CSG training he did could be considered a “natural recruiting pool” for the Mossad, which would probably be aware of the training courses.
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Asio’s assessment found HWMW also failed to comply with confidentiality requirements, telling the head of the Sydney CSG after his first interview that he had told Asio about the Sydney CSG. In his second interview, HWMW said he did not view this as a breach of confidentiality because the person was already aware HWMW was meeting with Asio.
The Asio director general, Mike Burgess, told Senate estimates on Tuesday night that the case raised “potential concerns” but said: “I want to be clear here on the public record – there is nothing wrong with the community security groups”.
He said, however, that it was important for people to be transparent about their involvement with the groups in overseas training.
“[CSGs] perform a decent function, an important function, especially in times like this, [the] training they might provide to help provide security to members of the Jewish community, is fine,” Burgess said.
“Of course, there is an element of that that in some cases it may be the case that that training done overseas in Israel might present an opportunity. And my best advice to anyone involved in that is to be public and not hide anything and everything will be fine.”
